WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. — The chair of the Agricultural Commission on Wednesday said her words were taken out of context when they were cited by the chair of the Planning Board at Tuesday's meeting.

 

Toward the end of the latest lengthy discussion of a series of zoning bylaw amendments the planners are moving toward consideration at the annual town meeting, Chair Chris Winters attempted to read into the record an Aug. 30 email that Ag Commission Chair Sarah Gardner sent to the chairs of other town committees.

 

"One of the most productive recommendations is to upzone some large-lot zoning districts to allow two building lots where only one is currently allowed by zoning, such as the regions with 2-5 acre zoning," Gardner wrote in an email with the subject line, "Diversifying Housing in Williamstown: committee collaboration on Article 37."

 

"People living on large lots could subdivide their property and these large-lot regions could potentially double their housing stock," Gardner's August email continued. "Combined with farmland preservation efforts, this approach could create a lot of housing without any new construction on farmland or large tracts of open space."

 

The email references a research project conducted by Williams College students under Gardner's direction.

 

Winters' effort to read portions from the email was interrupted by Planning Board member Stephanie Boyd, who accused the chair of being "disingenuous" for citing an email from Gardner, whose commission is on record opposing what is now known as the Planning Board's Article G.

 

Article G, also opposed by Boyd, would reduce the frontage, minimum lot area and setback requirements in the town's Rural Residence 2 district, where, currently, 2 1/2 acres of land are required for a single-family home.

 

In response to an inquiry from iBerkshires.com, Gardner on Wednesday said her August email was not in support of the Planning Board's current proposal and made it clear that "upzoning" needs to be combined with efforts to protect farm land.

 

"My email was not in support of the Planning Board's current zoning proposal to rezone the entire town: it was written before that had been proposed and should not be used as evidence of my support for the Planning Board's current rezoning proposal," Gardner wrote on Wednesday.

 

"My position on the Planning Board's proposal to rezone the entire town of Williamstown is that it is irresponsible to propose such a radical measure without carefully researching the land use impacts, the financial and tax impacts, the infrastructure impacts and the impacts on town services and schools, and without clearly and transparently and politely communicating these impacts to town residents, and allowing for full engagement, question and answer, and full understanding before asking for a town meeting vote."

 

Winters introduced the concepts at the heart of Article G at the Planning Board's June meeting. They were discussed again at its July meeting and were on the agenda, under the title, "Discussion of Housing Supply and Dimensional Schedule," for its meeting on Aug. 31, an agenda posted three days before Gardner's Aug. 30 email. That said, it was not until sometime in the fall that the board's deliberations began to focus on the question of RR2.

 

Eventually, the panel decided to put the proposed change in RR2 into its own warrant article, separate from the one currently known as Article F, which would make proportional reductions to the area, setback and frontage requirements in the General Residence District.

 

Boyd, who has consistently voiced support for the concept of reducing dimensional requirements in GR, this winter voted in the minority of a 3-2 vote to advance Article G, which addresses the Rural Residence 2 District.

 

Not surprisingly, Tuesday's meeting included a resumption of the continuing conversation between Boyd and Winters about whether RR2 should be treated the same as GR when it comes to changing the dimensional requirements.

 

"Where I get confused is who is excluded from our community when the lot is 2 1/2 acres and is somehow included in our community when the lot is 1.8 acres?" Boyd asked. "It has done absolutely nothing to include people into our community, and yet we risk what's valuable.

 

"And I'm not talking about sentimental value. I'm talking about environmental services. We need trees to suck carbon out of the air because we're making such a mess of it. We need to have farmland because we need food. If the last couple of years were not an indication why local food is important, I don't know what will be."

 

Winters said it is apparent he and Boyd never will see eye to eye on the question.

 

"What happens is you allow more lots, potentially, to be created, more legal lots, which increases supply, keeping in mind an acre and two thirds is still well over a football field, rural at any scale, in RR2," he said. 

 

"In GR, of course, I think you understand and agree with the same principle being applied: Where you have a lot currently double or triple its minimum size today, if you decrease that minimum size, you create opportunities for infill housing in a proportional way. That's all this is. It's allowing more opportunity for people to live on smaller lots everywhere."

 

Most of the articles that the Planning Board has crafted have unanimous support of the body. But in addition to the RR2, or Article G, issue, Roger Lawrence was a dissenting vote on a decision to advance Article F, which lessens the dimensional requirements for the most populated area of town, essentially, the residential neighborhoods on town water and sewer.

 

Lawrence began Tuesday's meeting by suggesting the Planning Board abandon its plans to bring big changes to town meeting for approval and instead dedicate its 2022-23 meeting cycle to explore other options to promote affordability and access to housing by residents from other socio-economic groups -- the motivation behind Winters' push for dimensional changes.

 

Lawrence said the board should explore Chapter 40R of Massachusetts General Law, which promotes "smart growth" overlay districts that allow greater housing density in specific areas while allowing municipalities to require developers to include an "affordability" provision for some or all of the units they create.

 

He also pushed for overlay districts in the rural part of town that allow "small homes on small lots" while still protecting open space. And he said the town should pressure Williams College to provide "money and land" to create affordable housing in town, specifically citing Taconic Golf Course, Cole Field and "hundreds of acres along Northwest Hill Road," that are owned by the college.

 

Peter Beck, who has generally aligned with Winters on the bylaw amendments currently moving toward May's town meeting, said a couple of Lawrence's ideas should be pursued by the Planning Board after the town addresses its history of "exclusionary zoning" that favors single-family homes on large tracts of land with the effect of keeping out less well-heeled would-be residents.

 

"I look forward to more specific overlay districts," Beck said. "I think the work we're doing now, townwide, is backing off some of the most exclusionary zoning that we have rather than creating the most accommodating inclusionary zoning that we can have. That's why I think everyone has a stake in it."

 

The Planning Board has received a couple of dozen letters from residents calling for a pause in the changes to the zoning bylaw until more time is given for study, pointing to the concurrent development of a new townwide comprehensive plan to replace the 2002 Master Plan.

 

Several spoke from the "floor" of Tuesday's virtual meeting on the issue.

 

Andrew Art cautioned against what he called the hypocrisy of preventing subdivisions to preserve "the quality of life in residential neighborhoods."

 

Nat Romano echoed the letters' call for study and said any zoning change that would increase the number of town residents has to take the town's infrastructure needs into account.

 

"It's not just increased water and sewage or parking spaces and things like that," Romano said. "It's things like what does the increase in population density and changes in proximity of buildings do to our police capabilities? And crime in our communities? Fires and all of that.

 

"The police department is pretty significantly underfunded and understaffed, to be honest. How are they going to deal with an influx of population over the next few years. What about the school system, which was brought up by [former Mount Greylock Regional School Committee member] Wendy Penner at your last meeting. The [middle/high] school was not designed for a large influx of population."

 

Ken Kuttner, a Williams economics professor who ran for the Planning Board last May, challenged the idea that zoning changes to allow increased housing stock will tend to put downward pressure on housing prices, as Winters has maintained throughout the conversation.

 

"The [Planning Board's] FAQ fails to address whether upzoning increases supply," Kuttner said. "As I mentioned at the last meeting, there's a lot of research on this question.

 

"The preponderance of the research indicates that blanket upzoning ... has no demonstrable effect on housing supply. We have to be cognizant of that and not oversell."

 

Winters has admitted from Day 1 that his proposal to reduce the dimensional requirements is not a cure-all that will make the town more affordable overnight. Rather, he has "sold" it as an incremental change to an outdated zoning bylaw that intentionally increases the scarcity of housing lots in order to make them less affordable.

 

"History will look back disfavorably on every year that communities lived with large-lot, single-family zoning," Winters said on Tuesday.

 

At least one panel of experts would appear to support that argument.

 

Last June, the White House Council of Economic Advisors published an article titled, "Exclusionary Zoning: Its Effect on Racial Discrimination in the Housing Market."

 

"Exclusionary zoning laws enact barriers to entry that constrain housing supply, which, all else equal, translate into an equilibrium with more expensive housing and fewer homes being built," the article reads in part. "Consistent with theory, the empirical literature finds a relationship between restrictive land use regulations and higher housing prices. For example, a study in 2005 finds that prices of Manhattan condominiums are 50 percent higher than they would be without zoning restrictions.

 

"[E]xclusionary zoning contributes to the racial wealth gap. If Black families are excluded from higher priced neighborhoods or if neighborhoods where Black families live are zoned into being less valuable, the homes purchased by Black families will not be worth as much over time as those of white families. In the long run, this diminishes wealth not only for the generation purchasing the home, but for descendants who receive a lesser inheritance. Indeed, housing likely explains more than 30 percent of the Black-white racial wealth gap."

 

The Planning Board on March 22 will hold a public hearing on all the zoning bylaw changes it is moving forward. That "hybrid" hearing will be held in person at town hall with residents able to make comments via Zoom, and it will be telecast on the town's community access television station, Willinet.

 

All the bylaw amendments would require a simple majority vote at May's annual town meeting to be enacted.